How Do You Do What is Real to Achieve Your Goals?

Note: This article is based on the blogger Mike Donghia, who tells us about his experience of being himself.

I want to share a simple statement that has really helped me make progress toward my goals and made my life simpler, which is, “If your goals are unrealistic or you are not willing to put in any effort, I am afraid you will not find what you are looking for below.”

However, if you are looking for a much simpler approach to making real progress in your life, any approach works almost 100% of the time. I have one phrase for you: "Do what's real," and that's it.

Quit reading about it, researching options, making complex plans, or whatever else you might do to prepare yourself and do the real thing.

Garage

Recently, my wife asked me to put together a set of shelving for our basement. Instead of starting this weekend, I created a mental list of all the things I "must" do first.

My garage was a mess, so, of course, it had to be cleaned, but upon cleaning, I realized that the real problem wasn't the mess, but rather, it eas in the presence of many things. So, I needed to do a massive, thorough cleanup.

But some of these things cannot be thrown away. We simply had too many machines, such as prams, bicycles, etc. So, I thought of hanging more on the walls and storing some outside, and I looked into making ceilings for machinery and carts.

I had done just about everything one could imagine besides the task my wife asked me to do, and several weeks later, as I considered many options, I remembered that I had to do the real thing.

How Do You Do What is Real to Achieve Your Goals?

1. Act before you feel ready

What if you start assuming that you'll never feel like you're ready to do something? This may be an exaggeration, but it is probably closer to the truth than we like to imagine.

You will never feel ready to accept your new neighbor's invitation to dinner, nor will you ever feel ready to reveal an idea that you have because it is not perfect, nor will you ever feel ready to implement your ideal plan to face the chaos that you suffer from in your life, but who said that must be a bad thing?

So, we should not regard uncertainty as something to be avoided. We can even choose to view it as a kind of adventure, so accept the idea of acting before you feel ready to do so and watch for new opportunities that appear before you.

2. Decrease pre-planning

Detailed planning is just a way of stalling or assuming we know more about the world than we actually do. The simplest and most humble approach is to start where you are, and with the amount of knowledge you have now.

It sounds intimidating, but you'll probably surprise yourself with how much progress you can make, and when you make that progress, you'll have a kind of realistic feedback that allows you to plan the next phase of your journey with ease.

3. Learn at your own pace

The desire to learn is another temptation. We want to stuff our brains with as many facts as possible in order to remain ready to meet any need that may suddenly arise, and this matter seems like real work, but it is safer. This is because it lacks the risk of failure, and it does not provide any realistic benefit to help us learn and grow.

For example, when I started learning to invest in the field of stocks, I knew that I needed to read some books to establish a pattern that I could rely on when making any decision, but I quickly got over that. I kept reading, but I didn't invest in stocks.

Theories make the world look so simple, but they don't pay attention to how stressful we are and what we must sacrifice in the real world. The longer you wait to do the real, the later you get the real learning.

4. Do not wait for motivation

It is common for me to be generally enthusiastic about doing something, but I don't have any particular motivation to do it at the moment. So, instead of writing an article - which I generally enjoy once I get started - I do some other work, like defining the idea for my next article, looking for a quote to use in the article, or reading some blogs on the same topic.

If I had relied entirely on having a motive as a reason to write the article, I might end up as the best essay-sweeper in the world, but fortunately, confidence in a simple truth enabled me to do real work, and it is that if I do what is real, the impulse will follow.

All you have to do is start what you want to do and keep doing it for 10 minutes. As soon as I started writing this article, I felt an increasing desire to finish the work. I could not have created this feeling if I tried, but because I knew that it would appear, I managed to get through those initial moments of uncertainty.

5. Avoid calculating probabilities

There is a time and a place for going against the odds, but I don't think it should be until we spend a lot of time doing what is real. According to general theories, we really have no idea what will and won't work. We don't even know what parts we'll enjoy and which parts will be good, and we certainly don't know enough to stop working.

Since my wife and I are starting a blog, we have no idea what the blog will become. We can't be sure if we will like blogging or just the idea of blogging. We are not even sure if we are good at it, or if people feel that we provide value compared to all other great blogs that are already out there.

However, one of the things we decided in the midst of this uncertainty is that we didn't know enough to say it wouldn't work, and we were willing to take a chance, committing to content and working on our site for a full year before deciding on the future.

In conclusion

It doesn't matter if you're learning a new skill, striving to achieve a goal, or trying to grow and advance in your personal life, doing the real thing is the simplest and most reliable way to get started.